In enterprises many situations or applications exist wherein large amounts of digital files available in one or several source formats have to be converted into one or several target formats or destination formats. In a print shop for instance, source files received from customers in jpg, tif, gif, bmp, pdf, ppt . . . formats have to be transformed into a target format suitable for the printers available in the print shop. In large corporations, vast amounts of documents available in various source formats like for instance thousands of invoices available in doc or xls format may have to be transformed into a target format suitable for archiving, e.g. pdf. Etc. As a consequence, there is a general need for scalable tools that automatically handle the transformation of vast amount of electronic files from various source formats into various destination formats.
It is well known to install a printer driver in each application that needs to convert files. As an example, a pdf printer driver may be installed in an Open Office application on a personal computer, laptop or tablet enabling the transformation of files that are accessed through the Open Office application into pdf format. Such printer drivers have to be installed or configured in each application wherein they will be used, they typically transform a single source format into a single destination format, lack scalability and modularity and consequently are not useful in situations wherein large amounts of files have to be transformed and/or situations wherein multiple input formats and multiple output formats must be supported.
To avoid that users have to manually plug-in file conversion tools in applications such as a browser, Japanese Patent Application JP 2001319069 entitled “File Conversion System, Web Server, File Converting Method, and Medium with Recorded File Converting Program” describes an online service that allows to upload a file, transform a file in a target format specified by the user, and makes available the transformed file upon execution of a payment for the online service. Although the service known from JP 2001319069 releases the user from the burden of installing file conversion plug-ins, it does not offer a scalable solution for enterprise grade file transformations.
United States Patent Application US 2009/0138540 entitled “File Conversion System and Method Used Thereby” describes a system and method for conversion of files that are sent over a network from a sender to a receiving device, e.g. a mobile device, a PDA, . . . As described in paragraph [0024] of US 2009/0138540, the system contains a database that maintains a list of supported formats for the receiving devices and uses this database to ensure that files sent to a receiving device arrive with that receiving device in a format, i.e. codec, resolution, screen size, . . . , that is supported by the receiving device. Apart from the supported formats database, the system known from US 2009/0138540 contains receiving modules, converting modules and transmitting modules that receive, convert and transmit a file to the receiving device, or deliver a network address specifying the converted file's location to the receiving device.
The system and method known from US 2009/0138540 is restricted to applications wherein files are sent over a network from a sender device to a receiver device that support different formats. It requires maintenance of a database of supported formats for the wide variety of existing portable and non-portable devices and it is not scalable to handle vast amounts of files, e.g. thousands or even hundred thousands of files that need to undergo a similar transformation.
United States Patent Application US 2003/0182450 entitled “Generic Infrastructure for Converting Documents Between Formats with Merge Capabilities” describes a platform for converting/merging files from a small device format to a server format. Format conversion modules can be plugged-in dynamically at runtime. Although the ability to plug-in conversion modules offers flexibility, the platform known from US 2003/0182450 lacks the scalability and load balancing advantages that are required for enterprise grade file transformations.
The best existing solution for enterprise grade file transformations is described in international patent application WO 2013/043739 entitled “Systems, Methods and Articles to Automatically Transform Documents Transmitted Between Senders and Recipients”. The system known from WO 2013/043739 extracts information from received documents, generates or selects transformation instructions, transforms the documents into a generic internal format, and at last generates an output document in the desired destination format. As is illustrated by 408 in FIG. 4, the system of WO 2013/043739 is queue based.
The system known from WO 2013/043739 is disadvantageous for several reasons. The system is focused on maintaining the information and positioning of information in official documents such as bank notes. It thereto makes use of an internal DTS format. The conversion of documents into such internal generic format is a cumbersome, additional step that reduce the scalability of the system, i.e. the ability to handle vast amount of documents within an acceptable time interval, and the modularity of the system, i.e. its ability to support additional source or destination formats.
United States Patent Application US 2013/0047135 entitled “Enterprise Computing Platform” describes a platform that transforms data from a source data format into one or plural destination data formats. Although the term “document transformation” is used, for instance in the Abstract of US 2013/0047135, the platform only transforms data in the source document. The platform known from US 2013/0047135 does not transform the document or file itself, i.e. the container of the data. This is explicitly acknowledged for instance in paragraph [00247] “. . . a source document can be used as starting point, and the data therein can be transformed to transformed documents . . . ”. The platform disclosed in US 2013/0047135 is typically used in the Enterprise Service Bus or ESB, a technology developed to route and translate data or messages between loosely coupled software components, called services, that are independently deployed, heterogeneous and disparate. In ESB, there is typically a single source data format that is transformed into multiple destination data formats.
It is an objective of the present invention to disclose a system and method for transformation of files that overcomes the disadvantages of prior art solutions addressed here above. More particularly, it is an objective of the present invention to disclose a system and method for transformation of files that is scalable to enterprise grade transformation applications, and that is modular to support simple or complex transformations from any source format to any destination format. It is a further objective to provide a system and method for transformation of files that supports load balancing across various servers, online/on-site installation, and prioritizing certain transformations.